Do you want to run a virtual class online on your WordPress website?

Creating an online virtual classroom may sound too technical or expensive. Luckily, there are easy tools that allow you to run a virtual classroom online without any special technical skills.

In this article, we’ll be showing you how to run a virtual classroom online class with WordPress using different tools.

Why Create a Virtual Classroom for My Business?

Almost anything can be taught online. Just type your class’s topic into YouTube’s search bar, and you’ll likely find hundreds or thousands of videos of people teaching that skill.

One great advantage of virtual classes is that you don’t have to teach them live. You can record videos in advance if you want. That way, it doesn’t matter if it takes you several attempts to explain or show something.

Taking your class online could be the best thing you’ve ever done for your business. It’ll let you reach people all around the world, and you won’t be limited by how many people can fit in your classroom or fitness studio.

This isn’t just for large classes, either. You might offer a one-to-one service, like math tutoring or career counseling. You can create an online classroom without a lot of tech skills or expensive tools.

Here’s what you’ll need.

What You’ll Need to Run Your Class Online (Virtual Classroom)

So where do you even begin to set up a virtual class? There are a few key things you need to get into place.

To run a class online, you’ll need these 3 things:

A WordPress website or online platform for your class. This is a place where students can find and access the class content.A way for students to sign up for your class, like a fillable form.A way to frequently communicate with your students, like email.

You’ll also likely want a way for students to talk and interact with each other, such as an online group or forum. Besides that, you can offer members-only recorded content such as video or audio seminars so that students can work through it at their own pace.

Your virtual classroom can also include live video content with features like interactive polls, audience feedback, screen sharing, and audience questions.

Plus, an LMS or membership site plugin is really useful for managing repeat payments, creating members-only content, and creating different levels of your class.

Don’t worry if that sounds like a lot. We’ll help you decide on the right tools and platforms for your virtual classroom. Here’s a quick outline that you can click to jump straight to a particular section in this article.

Creating an Online Platform for Your Class

It’s possible to run an online class through a private Facebook group or an email list where you link to videos you’ve posted on YouTube.

However, these aren’t great options. Not everyone uses Facebook, for instance. Plus, Facebook or YouTube could decide to ban you without any fault of your own.

An alternative is to sign up for a site like Teachable. This is a popular option, but it’s definitely not free. The most basic Teachable package costs $29/month, and you’ll pay a 5% transaction fee for each student on top of that.

Instead of third-party platforms, we recommend that you create a website for your class. There are lots of ways you can do this, but the #1 website builder in the world is WordPress. Over 43% of the websites on the internet are powered by WordPress.

The best part about WordPress software is that it’s completely free. However, you’ll need a domain name and web hosting to build a website. This is required for making any type of website.

Bluehost, one of WordPress’s recommended hosting providers, is offering our readers a great deal. You can get a free domain name and web hosting for just $2.75/month for your first year.

Note: If you are looking for a Bluehost alternative, then you can also try SiteGround, another popular WordPress hosting company that’s offering a great discount for small business owners.

Once you have signed up, you will need to install WordPress. Bluehost does it automatically for you, and other hosting companies make it super easy with just a few clicks.

After you have installed WordPress, you will need to install a few WordPress plugins to get your online classroom ready. Plugins are like apps for your WordPress site that lets you add essential features like contact forms, membership restrictions, and more.

We’re going to take a look at some important plugins to help you run your online class.

Getting Students to Sign Up for Your Class

You’ll need a way for students to register for your class. Even if you’re not charging for the class, you’ll want to know how many people are planning to attend. You may also want to get some information from them beforehand.

We recommend using the WPForms plugin for WordPress. It is the best WordPress contact form plugin and lets you create registration forms simply and easily.

The lite version of WPForms is totally free, but you may want to pay for the Pro version of WPForms, so you can integrate payments and email marketing services with your form.

Once you’ve installed and activated either version of the WPForms plugin, you can follow WPForms’ instructions to create an event registration form.

You can modify the event registration form template as much as you want. Here’s how a very simple registration form for a free class could look:

Communicating With Your Students in a Virtual Classroom

Whatever type of online class you’re running, you’ll need a way to communicate with your students.

Even if you’re just running a one-off class, you’ll still want to be able to remind students that it’s happening. You’ll also want a way to follow up, so you can let them know if you create another class.

There are lots of possible ways you could communicate with your students. For instance, you can send them messages on Facebook or WhatsApp. However, we strongly recommend using email.

That’s because virtually everyone has email. Most people are used to giving out their email addresses when signing up for things online. Asking them for their mobile number or Facebook details will put many students off from registering.

It’s important to use a reputable email marketing service to communicate with your students. That way, you can be confident that your messages will get through to them. Also, you won’t fall foul of any anti-spam laws.

We recommend using Constant Contact. They offer a free trial and excellent support.

If you’re creating a membership site, we recommend using either ConvertKit or Drip for your email service. These tools have advanced marketing automation features that you will likely find helpful.

If you’re on a very tight budget and need a free email marketing service, that’s possible too. We recommend looking at SendinBlue or MailerLite.

All of these options are good, reliable solutions for sending bulk personalized emails to your students.

If you’re using WPForms to take class sign-ups, then you can even integrate your form with your email marketing service. This means that students will be automatically added to your chosen email list when they sign up.

WPForms Lite works with Constant Contact, and if you pay for WPForms Pro, then you can choose from many other email marketing integrations as well.

For more details. please see our guide on how to create an email newsletter the right way.

Student Collaboration and Group Interactions in Virtual Classroom

Do you want your students to be able to interact with one another? If so, you’ll need to provide a straightforward and accessible way for them to do so.

There are lots of possible options here. If most or all of your students are on Facebook, then a private Facebook group could be a good option. Alternatively, you might want to create a forum on your website. We recommend using the bbPress plugin for this.

Another option is to create a private Slack channel for your students.

If you’d like students to be able to interact with one another live, then you’ll want to look at how you deliver your classes. Zoom, which we’ll cover in a moment, is a great tool for interactive live video classes.

Important: If you’re running a class aimed at children, it’s definitely not a good idea to allow them to contact one another. This could create serious legal issues. You could, however, provide a space where parents of your students can interact.

Offering Pre-Recorded Content for Online Classrooms

One way to run an online class is to record content ahead of time and add it to your site. This is a good option if you’re feeling nervous or unsure about the technology involved.

Plus, pre-recorded content is a great option for a class that you want to run over and over again. You can create it once and sell it an unlimited number of times. Students can easily take the course at their own pace.

For example, OptinMonster University offers customers access to courses that can help them make the most of the software and boost conversions. There are pre-recorded videos that users can view at their own convenience.

To get started, you’ll need a webcam if you’re recording a video of yourself. You’ll also need a microphone. You can find our microphone recommendations in our article about how to start a podcast.

If you’re on a really tight budget, you could use your computer’s built-in microphone and webcam. However, higher-quality equipment will definitely help you produce a more professional class recording.

You may also want to record your screen, perhaps to show PowerPoint slides. You can do this using specialist screen recorder software, or you could run a Zoom call and record it. We’ll cover more on Zoom in a moment.

Don’t Host Videos on Your Website

When you put your content on your website, it’s very important not to host your videos yourself. If hundreds of students want to watch it at once, then this might slow down or even crash your website.

Plus, video files are incredibly large, and they will fill up your hosting service‘s available storage in no time.

Instead, you should use one of our recommended free video hosting sites. That way, you can simply embed the video on your site, so students can watch it there without taking up your site’s valuable resources.

You can also create a subdomain and use that as a home for your videos. For example, on WPBeginner, we have a video subdomain.

If you want to password-protect your content or restrict it to members only, then we recommend creating a membership site. This also lets you charge different amounts for different levels of access.

If you’re interested in going that route, we recommend using MemberPress.

Offering Live Content in Online Classrooms

You may want to teach your class live. This could work really well for a class that you used to teach in person and are now taking online.

For live classes, we strongly recommend Zoom. It’s a tool that lets you host video calls with as many people as you want. The free plan gives you access to loads of features, with the one key restriction that your calls can’t be longer than 40 minutes.

You can schedule meetings in advance and send out an invite to your students. They can click a special link to sign in on their computer, or they can use the Zoom app on their phone.

Zoom has lots of useful options. For instance, you can use it to share your screen with students. This means you can show PowerPoint slides or demonstrate part of the lesson in real time.

Zoom lets you see your students, too. They can dial in with their cameras on if you want. They can also talk to you live, though you can mute them. We recommend that you mute everyone by default while you’re teaching your class. You can let students ask questions at the end.

There’s also a text chat feature in Zoom, which students can use to interact with one another while you’re teaching. You can even poll your students to find out what key topics they most want you to cover.

There’s also a ‘record Zoom call’ option, which lets you run a live class plus record it so students who can’t attend can watch it later.

Automatically Register Students for Zoom Webinars and Meetings

The paid version of Zoom lets you run webinars. However, manually sending out invites to webinars and class meetings can be time-consuming. A simple way to speed up the process is by automating it.

You can integrate your WPForms registration form with Zoom using Uncanny Automator. It is the best WordPress automation plugin that helps set up automated workflows.

You can think of Uncanny Automator as Zapier for WordPress websites. It lets different tools, apps, and plugins talk to each other.

The plugin lets you automatically sign people up for the webinar when they register for your class using WPForms. For more details, please see our guide on how to easily integrate Zoom meetings and webinars in WordPress.

Using an LMS or Membership Site Plugin

Do you want to turn your website into a virtual classroom? Or perhaps you want to lock content to make sure that only paid-up members can access it?

You’ll need to pay for this functionality, but it could well be worth it if you’re running a series of classes. Using your site as a learning platform works well for courses that last more than a few weeks.

For instance, you might be running a 12-week class. Students need an easy way to refer back to the earlier weeks’ material, and that will be tricky if you simply send out all the content by email.

Using LMS Plugins to Create Online Courses

With an LMS (Learning Management System) solution, you can even offer quizzes and grade students’ performance. You’ll need an LMS plugin for WordPress.

Our top recommendation here is LearnDash. It lets you create as many different courses as you like, with lessons, topics, quizzes, and categories. You can schedule lessons to be released over time if you want.

With LearnDash, you can also offer quizzes and tests for your students. You can even set assignments that you can approve and comment on. It also lets you create course-specific forums where your students can interact.

For more details, see our guide on how to create an online course with WordPress.

Restrict Access to Classes and Online Resources

What if you don’t want a whole learning environment, but instead you want to lock content on your site? You can do that with a membership site plugin.

We recommend using MemberPress as your membership site plugin. It’s easy to set up and has powerful access controls. You can restrict access not only to posts and pages but also to specific categories, tags, files, and more.

You can use MemberPress to ‘drip’ content to your students. This means they only get access to certain content after they’ve been a member for a specified period of time. You can even integrate it with LearnDash if you want.

For more details, see our ultimate guide on how to create a membership site.

We know there’s a lot to consider when setting up a virtual class. You can set up a simple class for free on your WordPress site.

You’ll only need to pay for your website domain name and web hosting, which doesn’t need to cost much. Besides that, you can use free WordPress plugins, software, and email marketing tools to connect with students, record lectures, and more.

We hope this article helped you learn how to run a virtual classroom with WordPress. You may also want to see our guide on the must-have WordPress plugins for all websites and the ultimate guide to boosting WordPress speed & performance.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Run a Virtual Classroom Online with WordPress (Tools) first appeared on WPBeginner.

Today, I’m extremely excited to share that Duplicator is joining Awesome Motive, and they’re now part of the WPBeginner family of products.

Duplicator is a top-rated WordPress backup and site migration plugin. Over 1,500,000+ smart website owners use Duplicator to make reliable and secure WordPress backups to protect their websites. Along with backups, you can also use Duplicator to easily migrate your website from one host to another within minutes.

Introduction to Duplicator – Quick Overview

Duplicator makes it easy for website owners to protect their websites with reliable and secure cloud backups. You can use it to create manual or scheduled WordPress backups and store them on any cloud service like Google Drive, Dropbox, Amazon S3, etc.

You can also use Duplicator to easily migrate and restore your website from one hosting provider to another, or even from local server to live.

This is why over 1,500,000 smart website owners and developers use Duplicator to backup or migrate websites while saving time.

What makes Duplicator stand out is that it’s both EASY and POWERFUL.

It comes with all the powerful backup features that you need including complete WordPress files & database backup, scheduled backups, recovery points to allow for quick rollbacks, archive encryption for enhanced security, and integrations with all the popular cloud storage platforms like Amazon S3, Dropbox, Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, FTP / SFTP, and any S3 compatible storage service like Wasabi, etc.

When it comes to WordPress site migrations, Duplicator really stands out from competition. It has an easy migration wizard, streamlined installer, custom search & replace, support for larger websites & managed hosting, server-to-server import, ability to migrate WordPress multisite to standalone or vice-versa, shared database support, and more.

For developers and agencies, Duplicator helps eliminate the rework by allowing you to create pre-configured sites that you can quickly set up with just a few clicks. Instead of manually configuring the same themes and plugins over and over, just configure one site and bundle it into a Duplicator package. Install the package to create a pre-configured site on as many locations as you want!

Aside from that, you can brand the installer with your own logo, and it comes with tons of developer hooks for further customization.

Smart developers and agencies use Duplicator as their preferred tool because it’s always reliable and it helps simplify even the large complex website migrations.

Whether you’re a small business owner or developer, I highly recommend adding Duplicator to your WordPress toolkit.

You can also use the free version of Duplicator to get started. 

Background Story – Why Duplicator? 

As you know, every year I do a WPBeginner reader survey where I ask for your suggestions on what new tutorials we should write, plugins we should build, new features we should add to our existing plugins, and so on.

For the last several years, the number of requests for us to build a beginner-friendly WordPress backup & migration plugin has been increasing.

So in 2020, I finally decided to reach out to Bob & Cory (co-founders of Duplicator) to see if they would be interested in joining Awesome Motive. The reason why I picked Duplicator was because I have used it numerous times for our various website migrations, and it was always the most reliable solution especially when dealing with complex migrations.

Not to mention we have written about them in numerous WPBeginner tutorials, so you already know that I am a fan of the product.

Well 2020 was a crazy year for everyone, so the timing wasn’t right for an acquisition, but nonetheless we stayed in touch. Fast forward to 2022, we came to an agreement for Duplicator to join WPBeginner family of products.

The two co-founders will not be joining the team as they want to move on to the next chapter of their life, but the entire Duplicator team will be joining us in the journey ahead, and I am very excited to work alongside them to build the features that you have been asking for.

As you know, my goal at Awesome Motive & WPBeginner is to help small businesses grow and compete with the big guys. Our software today powers over 21 million websites and helps shape the web for billions worldwide.

I believe that a reliable website backup solution is a critical part of every website because it helps you protect your website in case something goes wrong.

And that’s why I’m really excited to have Duplicator join the AM family.

What’s Coming Next? 

Our work is just starting.

We have an extensive list of ideas and feature roadmap from the feedback that you, the WPBeginner audience, have shared with us in the survey.

I’m looking forward to making those ideas come to life.

This is truly going to be a game changer!

Whether you’re a small business owner or a developer, I think you will want to choose Duplicator to protect your website with our reliable secure backups, and easily migrate your website when you’re looking to switch hosts.

If you have suggestions on features you’d like to see in the Duplicator plugin, then please let us know by sending us a message via WPBeginner contact form.

As always, I want to thank you for your continued support of WPBeginner. 

WPBeginner and Awesome Motive would not be here without YOU, and I just want to say how much I appreciate all of you.

And I look forward to continuing serving you and the larger WordPress / web ecosystem for years to come.

Yours Truly,

Syed Balkhi
Founder of WPBeginner

The post Welcome Duplicator to the WPBeginner Family of Products first appeared on WPBeginner.

Do you want to add a Facebook giveaway in WordPress to boost engagement?

A contest can get more people to visit your Facebook page and interact with your content. If these people like what they see, they even decide to start following your page or group.

In this guide, we’ll show you how to easily add a Facebook giveaway in WordPress to boost engagement, and get some extra followers.

Why Run a Facebook Giveaway in WordPress?

Social media contests can help you reach a new audience and grow your following across different plaforms.

However, unlike some other platforms, Facebook doesn’t allow you to offer a prize for liking or following your page. This is a big problem if your goal is to get more Facebook followers.

The good news is that the guidelines don’t stop you from asking people to visit your Facebook page or interact with a particular post.

For example, visitors might enter a contest by liking your most recent Facebook post or commenting on a picture.

This can get more traffic to your group and will boost engagement for a particular post on your Facebook page. If your page has lots of great content then these people may even decide to follow your page.

In this way, you can grow your Facebook following without breaking any rules.

If you use a flexible giveaway plugin, then you can often add multiple entry methods to a single competition. For example, visitors may be able to enter your contest by liking your Facebook post or subscribing to your email newsletter.

This means you can still get the person’s contact information and do lead generation, even if they choose not to follow you on Facebook.

Running a Facebook Giveaway in WordPress

The easiest way to run a Facebook contest in WordPress is by using RafflePress. It’s the best WordPress giveaway plugin and lets you create all kinds of competitions using a simple drag-and-drop editor.

You can add a prize photo, schedule the start and end times, choose a winner at random, and use templates to quickly launch new giveaway campaigns.

RafflePress comes with social entry methods so you can direct users to your Facebook page. You can also have multiple entry methods and make certain methods mandatory so anyone who wants to join the contest must engage with your Facebook content in some way.

RafflePress also comes with social logins and integrates with the most popular email marketing platforms, so you can also use them to grow your email list faster.

With that said, let’s create your first Facebook giveaway campaign using RafflePress.

Step 1. Creating Your First Facebook Giveaway Campaign

The first thing you need to do is install and activate the RafflePress plugin. For more details, see our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Note: There is a free version of RafflePress that has everything you need to create a simple giveaway in WordPress. However, in this guide, we’ll be using the premium plugin since it has more features, templates, and giveaway actions including entry methods that allow you to create a photo contest in WordPress.

The first thing you need to do is install and activate the RafflePress plugin. For more details, see our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, you’ll see the RafflePress welcome screen in the WordPress dashboard. You can now go ahead and enter your license key.

You’ll find this information in your account on the RafflePress website. After that, click on the ‘Verify Key’ button.

Now, you’re ready to create a Facebook giveaway in WordPress by going to RafflePress » Add New.

On the next screen, you’ll need to give your Facebook contest a name.

You can use anything you want, but it’s a good idea to choose a name that helps you identify the Facebook giveaway in the WordPress dashboard.

Next, choose the template that you want to use. RafflePress has ready-made templates for specific goals such as running a social media contest to grow your site.

You can select the template that best suits your goals, but for this guide, we’ll be using the ‘Classic Giveaway’ template as it lets us create a Facebook giveaway from scratch.

Simply hover your mouse over the ‘Classic Giveaway’ template and then click on the ‘Use this Template’ button when it appears.

This opens the template in RafflePress’ drag-and-drop builder.

We’re going to start by adding the prize to our Facebook contest. Simply click to select the headline area, which shows ‘My Awesome Prize’ by default.

You can now go ahead and type a title into the ‘Name’ field. To encourage visitors to enter the Facebook contest, you’ll typically want to talk about your prize in the headline.

After that, type in a description, which will appear below the headline. For example, you may want to add some more information about your competition, such as why visitors will want the prize, how much it’s worth, and why you’re running the Facebook giveaway.

It’s also smart to add a photo of the prize, so people can see what’s on offer just by glancing at the giveaway. If your prize is digital then you can easily create professional-looking images to promote your prize using web design software such as Canva.

To add a photo or graphic, simply click on ‘Select Image’ and then either choose a file from the WordPress media library or upload a new image from your computer.

Once you’ve done that, you can set the start and end date for the Facebook giveaway. If you plan to run lots of contests, then it’s a good idea to schedule them in advance as it guarantees that the competition will start and end on time, no matter how busy you get.

By scheduling your Facebook contest in advance, you’ll also have time to promote the giveaway properly. This helps you build a sense of excitement and anticipation before the contest goes live.

To schedule the Facebook giveaway, simply enter a date and time into the ‘Giveaway starts…’ and ‘Giveaway ends…’ sections.

When you’ve finished making changes to this section, click on the ‘Done Editing’ button.

Step 2. Adding More Actions to Your Facebook Giveaway

Now let’s add some actions, which are the ways that visitors can participate in the contest, such as subscribing to your podcast, joining your email newsletter, or visiting a WooCommerce product on your online store.

To see the different actions that you can add to your Facebook contest, click on ‘Actions.’

To add an action to your giveaway, simply give it a click.

Since we want to boost Facebook engagement, you’ll want to add actions such as Visit us on Facebook, Like our Page, View a Facebook Post / Video, or Share on Facebook.

Giving visitors multiple ways to participate can get you more entries, so you may want to add multiple actions.

There may also be some people who complete all the actions in order to give themselves the best possible chance of winning. In this way, you can get lots of Facebook engagement from a single participant.

Even though we want to boost engagement on Facebook, you may want to consider adding some entry methods that aren’t related to Facebook. This will allow more people to enter your contest, including people who don’t have a Facebook account.

After adding an action, click to select that action in the giveaway preview. You can now configure the action using the settings in the left-hand menu.

For example, if you’re adding the ‘Visit us on Facebook’ action, then you’ll need to enter your page’s URL into the ‘Facebook Page URL’ field.

Similarly, if you’re using ‘View Facebook Post / Video’ then you’ll need to enter the URL of the post or video that you want people to visit.

Each action also has some basic settings. You can type in a title, make an action mandatory, and even allow users to submit daily entries.

After that, you need to assign a value to the action, which is the number of entries users will earn for performing that action. By default, all actions are worth 1 entry.

If you have several entry methods, then you can use the value settings to make certain methods more attractive to visitors. For example, if your goal is to get more Facebook followers then you might make the ‘Like our Page’ action worth 2 entries.

Once you’ve filled in these settings, you can click on the ‘Add Actions’ tab and add more entry methods to your competition.

It’s also a good idea to arrange your actions based on your campaign goals. For example, if you want to get more shares, then we recommend placing the ‘Share on Facebook’ action at the very top of the ‘Entry Methods’ list.

Simply hover over the action in the editor and then grab the dotted button that appears to the left of the action. Then, move the entry method using drag and drop.

When you’re happy with how the Facebook giveaway is set up, don’t forget to click on ‘Save’ to store your changes.

Step 3: Design your Facebook Giveaway to Stand out

Now that your Facebook giveaway is set up, you can change how the contest looks.

Simply switch to the ‘Design’ tab, and you will see options to select a new button color, change the fonts, and more.

RafflePress lets you embed the Facebook contest in a page or post, or publish it as a separate landing page.

If you’re going to post your Facebook giveaway as a standalone page, then you can add a background image or change the background color.

To add an image, scroll to the ‘Background Image’ section and click on ‘Select Image.’ You can now either choose an image from the media library or upload a new file.

Another option is to change the background color by clicking on ‘Page Background Color.’

You can now make your selection from the popup that appears.

When you’re happy with how the giveaway looks, click on ‘Save’ to store your changes.

Step 4. Fine Tuning Your Giveaway Settings

Now that your giveaway looks great, let’s check its settings by switching to the ‘Settings’ tab.

Most of these settings are self-explanatory, but we’ll go through them one by one. First, we’ll look at the ‘General’ settings.

Here, you can set the basic options for your giveaway including whether you’ll show the giveaway winners and the total number of entries.

Next, you can create the rules for joining the Facebook giveaway by selecting the ‘Giveaway Rules’ tab.

RafflePress comes with a Rules Generator that will create rules for your campaign using a sample template. To get started, click on the ‘General Rules’ button.

This will open a form where you can type in some information about the Facebook contest.

In most cases, you or your company will be the contest’s sponsor. This means you’ll need to type in your company name and your business email address.

RafflePress will then use this information to create some basic rules for the giveaway.

Every area has its own rules about Facebook contests, so it’s a good idea to review these automatically generated rules and add any missing information.

If you’re using the contest to do lead generation or get more email subscribers, then it’s a good idea to only accept entries from people who verify their email addresses.

To do that, select the ‘Email Verification’ tab and then click on the ‘Contest must Confirm Their Email’ toggle to turn it from ‘No’ to ‘Yes.’

You can also use these settings to change the verification email that users will get when they enter your giveaway.

If you want to add Google Analytics or other tracking codes like Facebook pixel, then RafflePress allows you to track users who have successfully entered your giveaway.

To do this, click on the ‘Success Tracking’ tab and then add your Google Analytics script or Facebook retargeting pixel code.

When a visitor enters your Facebook contest, it’s not the end of the process. You may want to redirect the person to a thank you page, your top-performing blog, or some other page.

To create a redirect, select the ‘Success Redirect’ tab and then click the ‘Enable Success Redirect’ toggle.

In the ‘Redirect URL’ field, type in the URL where you want to send participants.

Since we’re creating a Facebook giveaway, you may want to give visitors the option to enter your contest using their Facebook accounts. This can be quicker and easier than asking them to type in their email address, so this may get you some more entries.

To enable Facebook login for your contest, simply select the ‘Social Logins’ tab and then click to enable the ‘Allow logging…’ toggle.

After that, click on the ‘GDPR’ tab. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a European Union (EU) law that gives EU citizens more control over their personal data.

If you break GDPR then you could get a fine or even jail time. To help you comply with GDPR, RafflePress can ask for the visitor’s consent before they enter your giveaway.

To add this checkbox, simply click on the ‘GDPR Consent’ toggle to turn it from ‘No’ to ‘Yes.’

RafflePress has a default GDPR disclaimer that it will show to visitors, but you can edit the disclaimer to add any missing information. For more information on the topic, see our ultimate guide to WordPress and GDRP compliance.

Spammers and bots can make it harder to achieve your contest’s goals. With that in mind, you may want to protect your Facebook giveaway with an invisible recaptcha.

Regular captchas usually ask users to complete a puzzle, which makes it more difficult for visitors to enter your Facebook giveaway. The good news is that invisible recaptchas run in the background so you can block spammers without adding friction to the user experience.

To add an invisible recaptcha to your Facebook contest, click on the ‘Repatcha’ tab. After that, activate the ‘Enable Invisible Recaptcha’ toggle.

For more information, see our guide on how to add recaptcha to WordPress.

When you’re happy with how the Facebook contest is set up, click on the ‘Save’ button to store your changes.

Step 5. Add Your Facebook Giveaway to a WordPress Post or Page

There are a few different ways to add a RafflePress giveaway to your WordPress website.

You can add the contest to any page or post using the RafflePress block. This is a great choice if you want to embed the Facebook contest in a blog post or other page.

To start, simply open the page or post where you want to include the giveaway. Then, click on the ‘+’ button and type in ‘RafflePress.’ You can then select the right block when it appears.

After adding the block, open the dropdown and choose the Facebook giveaway you created earlier. The RafflePress block will now load a preview of your giveaway widget inside the WordPress block editor.

You can then either publish or update the page to make the contest live on your WordPress blog or website.

You can also add the giveaway to any page, post, or widget-ready area using the shortcode. This is particularly useful if you want to show the Facebook contest in a sidebar widget so that it appears across your website.

In the RafflePress giveaway editor, go ahead and click on the ‘Publish’ tab. From here, click on ‘WordPress Shortcode’ and RafflePress will show the shortcode you can use.

Simply copy the code and then add it to any page, post, or widget-ready area. For more details, please see our guide on how to add a shortcode in WordPress.

Another option is to create a giveaway landing page. This is a great option if you want a standalone page that you can easily share on social media or add to your email newsletter.

In the RafflePress editor, select the ‘Publish’ tab. Then, choose ‘Giveaway Landing Page’ and select the ‘Click here…’ link.

In ‘Page Permalink,’ type in the URL where you want to publish your giveaway landing page.

After that, simply click on the ‘View’ button.

RafflePress will now publish your giveaway as a landing page.

If you’re using the SeedProd page builder plugin, then you can design a landing page using ready-made templates, blocks, and a drag and drop editor. You can then add your giveaway using a special Giveaway block.

This block integrates with RafflePress, so you can simply drag and drop it onto the page.

Then, choose the RafflePress giveaway you created earlier.

SeedProd will now show the giveaway inside your beautifully designed landing page.

For more information on SeedProd, please see our step by step guide on how to create a landing page in WordPress.

Step 6. Promoting Your Facebook Giveaway

If your Facebook contest is going to be a big success, then it’s smart to start promoting the contest before publishing it. By putting in some hard work before publishing your giveaway you can increase the chances of your campaign going viral, which will help you get more entries and achieve your goals.

You can start by sending an email newsletter to your subscribers and announcing the Facebook competition on your other social media profiles.

Another option is creating a floating bar with a link to the giveaway using a plugin such as OptinMonster. You can even use FOMO on your WordPress site to get more entries, by adding a countdown timer to the floating bar.

You might even send web push notifications asking your subscribers to enter the competition or refer any friends or family members who might want to take part in the Facebook giveaway.

Step 7. Announcing The Giveaway Winners

Once your giveaway closes, you need to pick a lucky winner. RafflePress automates the whole process, so simply go to RafflePress » Giveaways.

If you scheduled the contest to end automatically, then you can simply find the giveaway and click on the ‘Need Winners’ link.

If you didn’t set an end date for the Facebook giveaway, then you can close it manually by hovering your mouse over the competition and selecting ‘End Now.’

After that, just click on the ‘Need Winners’ link that appears.

On the following page, RafflePress will show all the people who entered your Facebook contest. Just type in the number of winners you want to pick and choose whether you want to allow unverified emails to win.

If you plan to contact the winner via email, then you’ll typically want to make sure only people with verified emails can win.

After that, just click on ‘Choose Winners Now’ and RafflePress will show the winner highlighted at the top of the list.

We hope this article helped you learn how to easily add a Facebook giveaway in WordPress to boost engagement. You may also want to see our guide on how to get more traffic to your WordPress website or our pick of the best WordPress Facebook plugins.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Add a Facebook Giveaway in WordPress to Boost Engagement first appeared on WPBeginner.

Do you want to add third-party fonts to your website without slowing down your website speed?

Custom fonts improve the typography and user experience of your website, but they take longer to load. The good news is that you can host your fonts locally to ensure your website is always fast.

In this article, we’ll show you how to host local fonts in WordPress.

Why Host Fonts Locally in WordPress?

While typography and custom fonts can improve the overall website aesthetics, they do have a negative impact on your WordPress performance. For example, if you are using a custom font from Google fonts, then they’re loaded from third-party services which will slow down your website.

Luckily, there is a way to use custom fonts without slowing down your site. A new Webfonts API was introduced in WordPress 6.0. This allows you to host fonts locally so they load faster.

Another reason to host Google Fonts locally is to stay GDPR compliant. That’s an important legal consideration if you have website visitors from the European Union.

When someone visits a website that uses Google Fonts, their IP address is logged by Google when the fonts are loaded. Because this is done without their permission, the EU now considers that a breach of privacy regulations, and you may be liable for damages.

That being said, let’s take a look at how to host local fonts in WordPress for a faster website. We’ll cover two methods, and the first method is recommended for most users.

Method 1: Hosting Local Fonts in WordPress With a Plugin

The first thing you need to do is install and activate the OMGF (Optimize My Google Fonts) plugin. For more details, see our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

OMGF is one of the best WordPress typography plugins. It offers a beginner-friendly way to improve performance and GDPR compliance by hosting Google Fonts locally.

Upon activation, you need to visit Settings » Optimize Google Fonts to configure the plugin. You should be looking at the ‘Optimize Fonts’ tab.

Notice the statement under the ‘Optimize Google Fonts’ heading that you just need to use the default settings to automatically replace your Google Fonts with locally hosted copies.

That means that as you scroll down the settings page, all you need to do is make sure that the ‘Font-Display Option’ has the default setting of ‘Swap (recommended)’ selected.

All you need to do now is click the ‘Save & Optimize’ button at the bottom of the page.

You’ll see a message at the top of the screen that says ‘Optimization completed successfully.’

Congratulations! Your Google Fonts are now hosted locally. Your website will load faster and you have reduced the risk of European lawsuits.

Method 2: Hosting Local Fonts in WordPress Manually

You can also host fonts locally without using a plugin by using the @font-face method from our guide on how to add custom fonts in WordPress. While this method requires more work, it allows you to use any font that you like on your website.

You need to download the fonts you wish to use in a web format. There are many places to find great free web fonts, such as Google Fonts, Typekit, FontSquirrel, and more.

If you do not have the web format for your font, then you can convert it using the FontSquirrel Webfont generator.

Now you need to store the fonts on your WordPress hosting server. You can upload the files using FTP or using your host’s cPanel File Manager.

You should create a new folder called ‘fonts’ in the directory of your theme or child theme and upload it there.

Once you have uploaded the font, you need to load the font in your theme’s stylesheet using custom CSS. You can add the code directly to your theme’s style.css file, or by using the Additional CSS section of the theme customizer.

You can do that using CSS3 @font-face rule like this:

Don’t forget to replace the font family and URL with your own.

After that, you can use that font anywhere in your theme’s stylesheet or the Additional CSS section of the theme customizer. The CSS you use will depend on your theme and where you wish to use the local font. Here’s an example from our demo website:

As you can see, our heading is now using the locally hosted Arvo font.

We hope this tutorial helped you learn how to host local fonts in WordPress for a faster website. You may also want to learn how to increase your blog traffic, or check out our list of must have WordPress plugins to grow your site.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Host Local Fonts in WordPress for a Faster Website first appeared on WPBeginner.